NX Reveal Trailer Coming Tomorrow, Promises Nintendo

Visit http://www.nintendo.com/ on Thursday, October 20 at 7 a.m. PT / 10 a.m. ET to be among the first to discover Nintendo NX. This preview trailer will serve as Nintendo's preliminary announcement of information regarding the platform.

Asif Khan is the CEO and majority shareholder of Shacknews. He began his career in video game journalism as a freelancer in 2001 for Tendobox.com. Asif is a CPA and was formerly an investment adviser representative. After much success in his own personal investments, he retired from his day job in financial services and is currently focused on new private investments. His favorite PC game of all time is Duke Nukem 3D, and he is an unapologetic fan of most things Nintendo. Asif first frequented the Shack when it was sCary's Shugashack to find all things Quake. When he is not immersed in investments or gaming he is a purveyor of fine electronic music. Asif also has an irrational love of Cleveland sports.

I am so ready for a crazy new good side scrolling Mario(the WiiU ver owned btw) that would be epic if we see it tomorrow or a massive 3D open world Mario I could go either way... and really we need both.

Anyone think it's weird they aren't saying codename NX or something similar? Also going so far to use the hashtag #NX? I actually kinda like the name, and if they are getting away from the Wii branding (they totally should), then it seems like a pretty safe name to me.

I think they somehow need to name it so that people understand it is both a console and handheld if they indeed do go that direction. Anything to avoid consumer confusion about what the damn thing actually is.

Preview? That doesn't sound overly encouraging. That kinda sounds like they'll do a short 2-3min vid and that's it. No full press coverage with tons of details.

I'm really thinking Nintendo's seriously way behind schedule on this. I assume it's the games and not the hardware. They can't really wait much longer for the full announcement. I kinda suspect they have to do something in Oct or face the wrath of their investors. This is why we're getting a "preview" and not a full press conference.

FYI, their fiscal year ends in March. This is why the NX has to release in March, which means
1) the release date has to be in his fiscal year
2) could also mean that it'll have to release in early march to impact sales in the fiscal period

This is to say that the March date is probably set.

I can't see them pushing the full formal press event farther than mid Nov.

Yeah, they have to do this because of their financial report next week.

They can dodge the press all they want but there is no dodging investors who want to know WTF Nintendo is doing for the next year. Saying "we're launching Pokemon Sun/Moon and Super Mario Run this quarter" isn't enough with the question of NX hanging over everyone's heads.

If it's still March they really have to reveal the hardware at this point. Maybe they can get away with not saying a name, and there won't be a price. But what everybody wants to know about the NX is what type of system it is, the games are obviously secondary to that.

Its not some weirdass custom cpu like cell/ppc its most likely an amd soc so all the easy ported stuff you get on xbone/ps4/pc as seen by skyrim plus the cool shit like splatoon/mario cart, super mario and the new zelda from their wiiui catalog.

It doesn't use any discs, it's not going to be fully BC. My money is on updates to their core MP games (SSB, Splat, MK8) and virtual console like re-releases for the more popular SP games. They've already been testing these waters with the Wii releases on the Wii U that work as their own app without having to take your system into Wii Mode.

Initial impressions are that this looks pretty rad and exactly what everyone predicted. Portable + home console, cartridges, love it. The fact that they are showing Splatoon/Mario Kart 8 has me hoping for either backwards compatibility or at least license upgrades. I don't want to have to keep my Wii U plugged in but I really like a bunch of my games for it so I'd like to continue to be able to play them without buying them again.

For a mobile SoC it's not bad but compared to full size console there are just too many hurdles to overcome. One being memory bandwidth. Another being constrained to mobile power draws. Do you really think a 15W mobile part is going to get anywhere close to a 100W console?

With all the games i have to play still on my PS4, PC, 3DS, and Wii U, the only way I'd get one is if it was fully backwards compatible with Wii and WiiU and they offered a Wii U trade in program. I doubt this will happen.

Nintendo has done both hardware and software differently for a LONG time and it's been biting them in the ass with the lack of third party support. With this unit being an Nvidia Tegra, there is already developer (Unity, Unreal) support for the hardware.

Yup, this will basically end the separate handheld line in about 2 years. Can't blame them. Means they can really focus their energies into one platform instead of two. Might also mean we'll get more 1st party games on the one platform.

Do we know that the DS is dead though? I have a hard time believing this will be the only portable. I really don't think giving this to little kids is going to work well. The DS can be dropped and it won't break. This thing looks fragile.

Yeah initially but recently it was mostly rumors of amd hardware. Makes sense though their new mobile gpu with pascal core is on par with their desktop models.
The no x86 cpu part makes me wonder about engine support and ports though.

That would be my guess since the Tablet refresh was cancelled. Easy to assume Nvidia needed the production capacity to meet the Nintendo demand, so it scrubbed the refresh; which isn't really doing all that well anyways.

Do gamers at large really care about mobile gaming like that? It seems to me that this is good for little kids. They are on their tablets all of the time.

But aside from kids it's seems like the only games adults play while on the go are simple games from the App Store. We are too busy to engage in a full-on gaming experience while on the go. I would bet people are much more content to play any game that requires even a moderate time investment at home/on a couch.

The scenarios in the video just aren't going to happen with adults (Which is fine), but we are a bit part of their audience. You can exclusively use it at home of that suits you, but it seems like a misfire and waste of tech. And because the hardware is housed in a small tablet, it's going to be severely underpowered (as usual).

I hate consoles because I think in many ways they retard gaming tech progression, but Nintendo is the one console I'd consider, if they made something worth a damn. We'll see I guess, maybe this will be the best thing since sliced bread. I doubt it though.

My friends and I play a game where we pick a stock level and then take turns trying to run through it. First person through it gets to add 5 "blocks" of items, then hands off the controller. Next person to complete the level (now with added blocks) gets to add 5 more. Repeat until someone has finished the level 5 times. It's a blast, and people get diabolical with their item choices.

It was definitely severely under utilized, but some of my favorite Wii U games made use of it. Think of Mario Maker, do you now have to un-dock the system to design a level, then put it back to play it on the TV? Kind of shitty, and people can no longer easily design levels as a group. My friends and I actually made an Ultimate Chicken Horse style game out of that.

But yeah Nintendoland, Mario Maker, Rayman Legends, Affordable Space Adventures, Stealth Inc. 2, and Splatoon all made great use of the gamepad. Plus games like Zelda were improved by it with regards to inventory management.

Yeah unless there is storage in both units, a larger backup drive in the dock and smaller flash storage on the portable. It could potentially shuffle titles back on forth between the device depending on what you've been recently playing.

Not quite sure if I trust nintendo to figure something like that out though.

The console also appears to be pretty large when portable, which is a "big" change (heheh) from previous portables. Can't fit in the pocket. I wonder if they gave up on that market since phones are kind of eating their lunch.

Understood but the WiiU was a sales failure. I thought they would learn their lesson making an under performing console. They may be okay because their integrating the handheld market into this console. Time will tell though.

Performance is not an automatic indicator of success. The PS2, Wii, and DS were the slowest consoles of their hardware generations and they are the three highest selling of all time.

The Wii U had many problems. The messaging was obtuse and confusing (is the gamepad an accessory for Wii?), very few devs put the gamepad to good use (Super Mario Maker, Nintendo Land, Rayman Legends, and Splatoon), and most important of all, the library took 18 months to come into its own.

The Switch will sink or swim based on how many games they make for the release window. Zelda is on it for sure, so that's a great start.

Because you can't make a super powerful mobile machine and keep any semblance of battery life. Unifying all their development efforts onto a single platform is the most important / smartest thing Nintendo could do.

Yes. But, they should also consider going the Sega route and just get out of the hardware race. Although, this does put them in a very different category from gaming on a phone or tablet. Those controls will likely end up being a bigger difference maker than we're giving them credit for.

Shoulder Buttons
Rumbling Controllers
4-player multiplayer
Motion Control
Wireless Controllers (Wavebird as way ahead of its times)
Thumbsticks on controllers (Sony added their analog sticks after the N64 came out)
Portable gaming (all the way back to Game & Watch)

Nintendo has absolutely shaped the video game industry and its technology as it stands today.

Sega went out of the hardware race because they were broke, nintendo makes a profit with every console sold. They have a reserve of 12 billion bucks thanks to the wii and the ds, every game they release sells in the millions.

They could bleed money for a century and wouldn’t need to go the sega route.

It will be exactly what it sets out to be. I don't need another contender with PS4 and Xbone and PC. I need first party Nintendo games delivered to my face with a low barrier to entry. The thought of taking said games on the go sounds like a blast too.

Looking over the teaser again, there are air ports all over the tablet half. That suggests the thing will run warm at the least. I assume they'd go for passive cooling, but it also means the air ports are going to be subject to dust, smoke and pet hair.

Well there's a large age gap of "kids". My son will be 6 when this comes out. He doesn't know it yet, but this thing is going to blow his fucking mind. He's in school right now and has no idea what a press release is or how things like this are announced. But sometime in the middle of March we will be in Target and this will be on display and he will be fawning all over it. Now a 12 year old is still a kid and yes, he's probably watching this video on his iPhone in the school's restroom for the 15th time right now.

Kids or no, the groups Nintendo does include are pretty funny. I don't think competitive Splatoon is going to pack stadiums like that. And I doubt yuppies are going to huddle around a tiny screen to play Mario Kart during a fancy rooftop party.

All depends on what their indie program is like. Usually it's pretty closed. Also, no idea how you communicate to different Switches. I'm guessing you need some form of standard networking model, which the game doesn't have and can't have with a complete rewrite, essentially.

I'm guessing this will be on par with Xbox One? But then Scorpio and PSNeo or whatever will come out, and third party will suffer again? Not to sound negative but I feel like that's pretty obvious as that always happens with Nintendo.

So at best, this will play already released, older games - the newer stuff won't work unless downscaled (which no third party will do)?

I really don't care too much, I just want to play their first party games and have a PC and Xbox anyway.

For reference, the 360/PS3/Wii-U are all around 0.3-0.4 TFLOPS. The rather huge caveat with the switch is that the tegra platform reports TFLOPs in FP16 operations, so if you compare it apples to apples with xb1/ps4, you have to halve that TFLOPs number. Still, you're talking 2x wii-u if you choose double precision, which I doubt devs would usually do. They'd probably choose single precision and better performance.

Cool. I like the idea. A few things. I'll hope the new pro controller is included (I doubt it though) and also THAT THING IS HUGE. That thing looks way to big to just carry with me like my DS or Vita. I take a train every day to work so mobility and size are key. I guess until my hands are on it it may be different.